Minnesota’s clean water advocates praised the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency today for its comprehensive study documenting the sources of nitrogen pollution that endanger Minnesota’s drinking water, fish and aquatic habitat – and contribute to the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Several months after flooding in northeastern Minnesota led to $100 million in damages last June, a new Environment Minnesota Research and Policy Center report finds that weather-related disasters are already affecting hundreds of millions of Americans, and documents how global warming could lead to certain extreme weather events becoming even more common or more severe in the future.

Minnesota and surrounding states are experiencing more severe heat waves, threats to the agricultural sector and more extreme rainfall events and flooding due in part to global warming, according to the new draft National Climate Assessment report released on Friday, January 11. The draft report incorporates input from more than 240 experts from around the country, and from federal agencies including the Department of Energy and NASA.